Adrian Monk/History
History Early Life Monk was born on June 4, 1959. His family grew up in Marin County, California. His parents were very strict and far from warm or affectionate. His father, Jack Monk, a textbook writer, left the family in July of 1972 after going to pick up some Chinese food. Adrian spoke to him again in "Mr. Monk Meets His Dad". According to "Mr. Monk In Outer Space", he spoke to his brother Ambrose as well but left him collecting his mail saying that he would pick it up in one of his Volkswagen. For all of his childhood, he also had various bad experiences with Christmas: Notably, in 1964, his mother was sick, his older brother Ambrose locked himself in the basement to avoid Christmas, his dad was "dad", and Monk himself received a Christmas gift from his dad consisting of only one walkie-talkie, to which Jack Monk coldly stated that Monk would have been better off with one anyways as he didn't have any friends. This contributed, in part, to his hatred of the Christmas season in his adult years. When he left, Ambrose and Mrs. Monk were nearly comatose, leaving it up to Adrian to hold the family together; cooking the meals and doing the shopping."Mr. Monk and Little Monk" He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981. While there, he acquired the nickname "Captain Cool" because he would often spend his weekends defrosting the refrigerator in the student lounge. It was there that he met the love of his life, Trudy. He met her at the library when another student asked her for her phone number and Adrian let her write her number down on piece of paper using his back. Due to his "very sensitive skin," he was able to figure out her phone number. It took him over three weeks to call her, which he later said was the bravest thing he ever did. "Mr. Monk and the Class Reunion" Adrian and Trudy were married for seven years before her untimely death. A car bomb exploded while she was in a parking garage. Trudy was not killed outright, but lingered long enough to speak a few last words to the EMT: "bread and butter," the words she would always say when she and Adrian would be separated on the streets.Mr. Monk Meets Dale the Whale Devastated at her loss and his inability to solve her murder, Adrian's phobias and compulsive behaviors reached a new extreme. After suffering a nervous breakdown, he received a psychological discharge from the police department, which only furthered his depression. For three years, he was virtually catatonic and reclusive, never leaving his apartment. Eventually, his former colleague, Leland Stottlemeyer, hired a private nurse, Sharona Fleming, to try and coax him back into his life."Mr. Monk and the Candidate" For some time following Trudy's death, Adrian would read a collection of poetry by Ralph Emerson every night. By 2001-2002, four or five years after the fact, Monk is still mourning his wife Trudy. He has not yet fully solved the case, although he has discovered that the car bomb was built by Warrick Tennyson for a six-fingered male. Monk has devoted the last nine years of his life to finding the man who killed his wife, and to consulting with San Francisco police detectives on various cases. A con was set up where a woman pretends to be Trudy in one episode, in order to gain access to a storage locker in her co-worker's possession. At the end of that episode, the impostor Trudy is caught in between a gunfight and mortally wounded. The impostor dies in Monk's arms. Monk has several phobias, including germs, heights, crowds, milk, and glaciers. Besides dealing with his OCD, Monk's assistants also appear to have a hands-on role in organizing his consultancy work. His former assistant, Sharona Fleming, quit after several years of loyal service to her boss to go back to New Jersey and remarry her ex-husband. He suffered depression following her departure, but rebounded upon the arrival of her replacement, Natalie Teeger, who was able to relate to Adrian's grief over Trudy after her husband Mitch died in service and as a result, form her own personal relationship with Adrian. While his obsessive attention to minute detail cripples him socially, it makes him a gifted detective and profiler; he has an uncanny ability to reconstruct entire crimes based on little more than scraps of detail that seem unimportant (if noticed at all) by his colleagues. Although he may appear defenseless, he has on more than one occasion been able to physically stand up for himself against his enemies (usually triggered when that person speaks ill about Trudy or laughs at Adrian's grief), when provoked into a fight."Mr. Monk Can't See a Thing" After the identity of Trudy's true killer (the man who hired Frank Nunn and Warrick Tennyson) was exposed as federal judge Ethan Rickover, and Rickover committed suicide after Adrian confronted him over the murder, Adrian's condition improved slightly, although he confided in Dr. Bell that he felt empty over the fact that pursuing Trudy's murderer was what drove him for 12 years. However, once Adrian met and bonded with his stepdaughter Molly Evans, he was able to regain control of his compulsions and began to lead a semi-normal, relaxed life."Mr. Monk and the End, Part 2" References Category:History Pages Category:Adrian Monk